Unplug

It's a question I hear, often before the girls are even dressed. Their gangly legs poke out from beneath t-shirts. Sometime over the last year they shifted from their dad's shirts to mine. The hems aren't as long as before, the v-neck dips and are yanked up by still-modest hands.

Between school vacation, endless shopping lists, mailing holiday cards, cooking for extended family and traveling in potential winter storms, the holiday season can be overwhelming for parents. And with the hectic holiday season, the spirit of the holidays can sometimes get lost.

New to the app store, Wakie lets strangers wake up strangers all around the globe. Plug your phone number and desired wakeup time into the app, fall asleep, and you'll get a phone call (from anyone, anywhere on the planet!) when it's time to rise.

As technology has evolved, every iteration has made the data more rich and real-time based. In turn these advancements give more dimensionality to the device in our pocket and make ignoring it a personal affront.

Put your phone down for a prescribed amount of time -- five minutes, half an hour, the length of a meal -- and go experience something. If the thing which caught your attention is still there when you plug back in, circle back to get a picture when you can. Then share it.

A friend told me that back in the early aughts, it was customary for talent agents to whip out their cell phones during meetings to show that they had more important matters to attend to. Nowadays, who doesn't do that?